


let me lay my head down (on the shadow by your side)

by WildandWhirling



Series: The Courtship of the Two Serpents [3]
Category: Marie Antoinette - Levay/Kunze
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst, Denial, F/M, Fake Kill Scare, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Missing Scene, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24106837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildandWhirling/pseuds/WildandWhirling
Summary: In the days leading up to the Storming of the Bastille, Margrid can't find Orléans. Which is fine, because she doesn't like the man.He wouldn’t die that easily, not when-She would know, goddamit. You don’t fuck someone for five years and then not know when they died on you.She would know.
Relationships: Margrid Arnaud/Philippe Égalité
Series: The Courtship of the Two Serpents [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748320
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	let me lay my head down (on the shadow by your side)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janetcarter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janetcarter/gifts).



> This works fulfills two prompts. The first is for my Bad Things Happen Bingo card "Fake Kill Scare", the second is for janetcarter, who wanted the following prompt from a kiss meme: "Kissing so desperately that their body curves into the other person's". And then. I might. Have written about 7k or so of angst to explain it.

_“Where is Mama?” The girl asked, clinging onto her blanket she’d dragged from the room, a little scrap of fabric that had the letters “MA” embroidered on it in red thread._

_“You should not be up, Margrid,” one of the Sisters stiffened, glaring at the girl._

_Margrid Arnaud, age 7, straightened up, fixing her with a glare in turn. “I wish to see my mother.”_

_It was several hours after the lights were out, long after the other girls had quieted, and Margrid had not had an hour’s sleep before a nightmare tossed her back up. And the convent was dark at night, and cold. The trees outside her window rattled against the window pane, like the rapping of a ghost (she didn’t believe in ghosts, not like the others, but it was annoying anyway) and she wanted her mama, who had been in her dreams, a sad smile on her face, before-._

_Something was_ **_wrong_ ** _. She could feel it. She always had a feeling when something was going to happen. Sister Agnés, with a fond smile, had sometimes said that she was like a little cat, pricking her fur up before a storm._

_But now, there was no smile on Agnés' face, only pity. (She didn’t_ **_want_ ** _pity.) “Margrid-” she said, shaking her head before kneeling on the stone floor, taking Margrid’s hands in her big ones. Margrid pulled away. She didn’t want Agnés to soothe her, she wanted to know what was going on. Agnés sighed, shaking her head, “Margrid. Listen to me. There has been a terrible accident. Your mama is in Heaven now.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“You will not help the girl by lying,” Sister Agathe said, “Your mother is in Hell, by her own decision.”_

_Margrid forced herself on the tips of her toes, fists curled up into balls by her side. “You’re wrong!”_

_“She ended her own life, child.” The other woman said, glaring down at her while Margrid seethed. “She could not live in the shadow of her sin any more and decided to leave this life, without hope of deliverance.”_

_“She wouldn’t leave me, she wouldn’t-” Margrid clutched at the blanket, the embroidered letters brushing against the ground._  
  


_“She is damned to Hell, and you will be too if you continue as you have been.” Agathe raised her nose, “Perhaps she realized what a disrespectful brat she raised and chose to end herself then and there.”_

_“Sister Agathe,” Mother Superior snapped, “You are too harsh on the child. I would ask you to leave and spend the rest of the evening in reflection.”_

_Margrid was silent at that, running the blanket back and forth in her hands. Mama didn’t leave because of her. She wouldn’t. Mama always said that she loved her, didn’t she? If she loved her, she wouldn’t have left her, would she? Unless she didn’t love her, but she said she had, she always did in her letters, she said-_

_“Margrid,” Agnés stroked her hair, and the girl swallowed, and it was like trying to force a boulder down her throat, scratching on the way down, but she continued anyway. They wouldn’t see her cry._

_“It isn’t true, is it? She’s just saying it to scare me, isn’t she?” Her mama wasn’t dead._

_It was just Sister Agathe trying to force her to bend. She never liked that Margrid’s response to her pressing down on her was to press back. The other girls, they looked down when she passed, paid the respects they were told to pay, but Margrid would only glare. It wasn’t that she was disrespectful, not really, though that was the word she heard them say when they thought she was out of earshot. She could be very respectful, once they’d earned it. She respected Mother Superior, and Agnés and Mama, and the Saints and Martyrs and Apostles, even though some of the sisters thought her constant questioning was a sign of disrespect. (How could it be disrespectful, she wondered, if she just wanted to know more?) Sister Agathe just hadn’t._

_“Margrid, child…” And she always hated it when they called her “child,” like she was a baby. She was seven years old, she could understand things. “Your mother has departed this life. We should be strong in this time. Perhaps,” she swallowed, “Perhaps we should offer up prayers for her soul. Would you like that?”_

_She reached out her hand, and Margrid took a step away, shaking her head at all of them gathered together, at the pity on their faces. Prayers hadn’t helped her mother in life, how would they in death?_

_“Margrid-” Agnés began, and Margrid didn’t want to hear it. Before they could grab her and choke her with more sympathy, she took off, back to their rooms. She didn’t want to hear it, she didn’t want to hear it, she didn’t-_

_“Margrid!”_

_She ran away from Agnés’ echoing voice, down the long halls, the stone an old friend to her bare feet, not stopping until she reached her room._

_She got no sleep that night._

* * *

There was something in the air on the 12th of July, 1789, a certain tension cutting through, prickling at her skin. It was there when she woke up that morning, a winter’s chill in the middle of July, and it remained as she did the few things necessary for her morning toilette (generally, pulling on her dress, splashing a bit of cold water from the washbin on her face, and running a brush through her hair a few times), and it stayed with her as she made her way through the streets, steps quickening. 

Something was _wrong_. 

She stood at the door to the print shop, swallowing, shifting her weight from side to side. 

She was being stupid. Best to go in and get it done with so she could put this behind her. 

She threw the door open. The room was dark, the candles unlit. Workers shuffled from place to place, their voices mixing together into a constant drone, punctuated by the rise and fall of the press and the rustling of paper. 

This wasn’t unlike when Philippe was exiled, the same feeling of the life of the place going out. She hated to admit it, but he had the type of presence someone couldn’t help but notice, and if he was in the room, all the attention was on him, and when he wasn’t...it was like something was _gone_. The days when he popped in were the ones that she remembered, because they were the ones where there was something alive in the place, sparking off the two of them as they would talk and spar, Philippe occasionally brushing a hand against her arm that she would pretend not to notice, and that he would retract the second that someone started looking too closely, and there was someone who could match her brain for brain. They weren’t a real couple, not in the way people usually thought of it. She could never be his wife and she refused to be his formal mistress, but in those moments, it was as close as she’d come. 

“Everything all right here, Hébert? She propped her elbow against the printing press, the workers bustling around her. (Since Philippe’s exile, they knew better than to cross her.)  
  


“It’s about time you showed up,” Hébert shoved several damp newspapers in her hands, already moving onto the another stack. 

“Great to see you, too,” she drawled. 

“No time for games,” Hébert waved a finger in front of her face, and it was a miracle of self restraint that she didn’t bite it, “Necker’s resigned and the people on the streets are furious. If there was ever a time to put your back into it, now’s it.” 

What did he think she did all day? Lounged on a couch like the Queen of Sheba? 

She made a show of picking at the pages. “So, Boss wants to keep his hands clean?”  
  
“I wouldn’t know, I’ve not heard from him all day.” 

She paused. It was normal. It was perfectly normal. Philippe, she’d learned, was a free spirit. Whenever he got the urge to do something, he would be out doing it, regardless of things like time, money, and the weather. (The number of times she’d seen him return home soaking wet because he’d had it in his head to go on a half-cocked idea…) As much as he could be a scheming, manipulative bastard in his political life, he could be just as impetuous and stubborn as a bull when he had his mind set on it. He might have wanted to go off riding. (He didn’t hunt, not anymore, he never talked about it.) He might have wanted to see one of his creatures - De Laclos or Genlis or Elliot. He might have wanted to take a nice, pleasant stroll through the countryside. 

But if Necker was gone, he _should_ have been there. Something as important as this, and he wasn’t there? 

Hébert continued, “Popular rumor is he’s been thrown in the Bastille.” 

“What?” 

“I’ve heard it all around. The king is sending out his soldiers to kill us all, and he’s already had it in his mind to kill Necker and Orléans for ages.” 

“And you didn’t think that was important?” Not that she took it seriously. Why would she? If she took their own headlines seriously, the King was one step away from killing them all every other day. 

“Listen, I’m worried too. He’s a good boss, he pays well, but,” Hébert gripped her shoulders only a second before she snatched his hands away, and he looked down at the ground, awkwardly stretching out his hands, “If he’s dead, it’s every man for himself.”  
  
“You think I don’t fucking know that?” She snapped. Poor, helpless Margrid, who knew how she was able to survive on the streets for two decades before Jacques Hébert, hero of the Revolution, took her under his wing (and his stupid fucking green coat)? Please. Hébert wouldn’t have lasted for a second. He wouldn’t have done half the things that she’d done to put food in her mouth. 

“Then get on it. Go on, go on,” he shooed her away with his hands, and she snatched the papers away, glowering at him. 

What did he know, anyway? 

* * *

It wasn’t hard to see where she needed to go, it was just a matter of following the crowd to the Place Louis XV, adding her voice to theirs, guards standing anxiously along the boundaries of the crowds, shuffling back and forth. 

“Soldiers! Soldiers sent to Paris! Necker betrayed!” She waved the newspapers around, the money falling like rain into her sack, as people thronged to hear any news, anything at all. “The Austrian Bitch is after your blood! Protect yourselves, _citoyens_ !” This was the easy part, getting people’s attention. It didn’t take that much, saying something outrageous, something that would make them look. People were dumb and bored, it didn’t take them too much to believe in anything, because they wanted to believe. And then, once she had them, keeping them by working it, using her hands and body to tell the story in the headlines.  
  


It was easy to forget everything when it was like this, to fall into a rhythm of her own making and dance to her own beat, the attention of the people intoxicating. For the first time in her life, people noticed her, the street rat they’d kicked into the gutter, they looked to her for information, and...alright, she could understand Orléans a little there, even if they came at it from different angles. He sought attention because he’d been born into it, she did because she hadn’t. 

And then, she was thrown off balance. 

  
“Where is the Duc d’Orléans?” Someone cried out.  
  
It was like she’d been kicked in the stomach by a horse. 

“I-I don’t-” What the Hell was happening? She didn’t _stammer_. Now would be the time to work it, describe his horrible situation in the Bastille, call the Royals murderers, traitors, but something held her tongue back. 

The crowd, respectable bougeois men and women, the type who’d go to church and primly sit in the front pew, gathered up together with dockworkers, soldiers, prostitutes, all of them looking at her at the gates to the Tuilleries, and she was stock still. 

“I don’t know.” 

“They’ve taken Orléans, our father!” A man near the back shouted, and normally, she would roll her eyes at the description of Orléans as “father” to anyone, except for the children he already had, but instead, she continued to stay still, time only measurable in the breaths she forced herself to remember as she stared down at the pavement, a sea of dull, gray squares that stretched across the Place Louis XV. 

“He’s in the Bastille!” 

“No one escapes from that place!”

“Cowards!”  
  
“They wouldn’t risk it, he’s been executed!” 

_“Murderers!”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Murderers!”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Murderers!”_

“They thought to do it last year, but now they won’t miss their chance!” 

“Justice!” 

Other things were said, all the horrible details blurring together into a rumbling, overwhelming cacophony. The newspapers sold, faster than she could hand them out, her hands too numb to even be aware of the coin passing into her hand. He _wasn’t_ . It was just a stupid rumor, the crowd jumping to conclusions. She knew that better than anyone. Just a stupid rumor. She would report how many they’d sold that day, and Philippe would touch her back or shoulder, and she would pretend like it it didn’t matter, and they would laugh about the stupidity of people, and that would be that. They’d be normal again, or at least. _Their_ normal. 

She forced herself to look at the bust of Philippe that they paraded alongside Necker’s, poking fun at the bad resemblance. She didn’t think she would ever be over it, the difference between Philippe in public life, dressed in the robes of a Prince of the Blood, dignified, his hair perfectly hidden behind a white wig, standing still and alert, versus the Philippe who stole kisses from her when she turned her back on him for so much as a minute when they were alone, the one who she’d seen naked and unbound, lounging in bed, the one who’d told her about the latest horse races and his favorite picks to win with the same fervor that he used when talking politics, the one who’d complain loudly whenever she stole the covers from him in the middle of the night when she stayed over. (Hey, it was his fault: He invited her, knowing what she was like.) It might have looked like Philippe, on the surface (though she thought they bungled the nose), but if she passed it on the street, she would never have recognized it as him. 

The longer she looked at it, the more she felt an ache deep in her, like an old scar being cut open, ebbing beneath her skin. 

These people, the ones putting Philippe in the grave, they didn’t know him. She didn’t either, not really, but she knew more than them.

She walked away, shaking her head. She needed to clear her mind. Take a break. 

Hébert could bark all he wanted; she’d sold the damn papers. 

She didn’t even _like_ the man. 

* * *

That night, she tossed and turned. 

He couldn’t be, right? He couldn’t be. 

Rumors started on the streets all the time, she should know that better than anyone. He wasn’t. 

They wouldn’t. 

_They threw Rohan in the Bastille, hadn’t they? They hadn’t given him a warning. They’d exiled Philippe to his estate for speaking up against the King once, if they knew-_

They wouldn’t. No. It would be an exile at most. Nothing serious. They wouldn’t kill him. 

He wouldn’t die that easily, not when-

She would _know_ , goddamit. You don’t fuck someone for five years and then not know when they died on you. 

She would know. 

Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orléans wouldn’t die like that, not without saying anything. He wouldn’t do it quietly, not without making the biggest scene possible. It wasn’t in him. It wasn’t _right_. 

What had their last conversation even been? Did she remember? Had she thought it wouldn’t be important and just...let it slip? 

Why was she even worrying? What was the point? He was just one more self absorbed aristocrat. She didn’t even like him. He was just a convenient fuck. They got on alright, she liked the attention every once in a while, when he wasn’t being _annoying_ , but. It wasn’t anything serious, because she didn’t get attached. Not to him, not to anyone. 

Attachment meant-

She buried her head in the pillow, the old ache returning. 

Attachment meant pain. 

* * *

She awoke to a world on fire with the news that troops had swarmed the Place Louis XV, not two hours after she’d left, with descriptions of women and men being trampled beneath the horses of the officers, old men being cut down, blood running through the streets like it was the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre all over again. And all through this, one thought ran through the streets, like a rabbit with a fox in the corner of its eye: 

_Where is the Duc d’Orléans?_

At this point, Margrid had heard the details enough, it didn't matter whether she believed it or not, it was as if she was there herself, as if she was even an accomplice. A soldier, drunken off his ass, talked about how he heard from his friend serving under the Comte de Peyrol, who could swear that the Comte had left barracks early on the 12th, that he’d once seen him move bodies from the Bastille before. 

And then there were the screams from the Bastille, prisoners being butchered in the cells. 

They could scarcely print enough newspapers, and she didn’t even need to so much as open her mouth to raise awareness, they were out of her hands as soon as she had them. Everyone in the city knew that the Royal Family had ordered a massacre on the civilians, and they knew it because it was known. The newspapers just provided the confirmation that they needed, each one more graphic in its description of the Austrian’s plan for them. 

Palais Royal was crowded, even more so than usual, the cafés flooded with people, as orators gave fiery speeches decrying the violence, demanding the people should come to arms. People came to Palais Royal for whatever they wanted, when the average store or café wouldn’t do, when society had failed them. Normally, that meant a stuffed shirt bourgeois shopkeeper meeting a woman of the world underneath one of the arcades, or a broke soldier going to one of the gambling dens to change his fate. Now, though, they wanted more than that, and once again, Palais Royal was happy to oblige, and she wished that Orléans was there with her, because it was everything he had been imagining.

It was everything they had wanted. 

But she didn’t care for the cafés, the shops, the stores, didn’t care for the orators and their lofty speech, which was carried with the confidence of men who had big words to back them and nothing else but thought they were important (she could use those words, if she wanted to). She cared for the palace itself. 

She swore to God that if he was there, then-

“I want to see the Duc,” she said. “Let me through.” 

  
“We can’t do that,” one of the servants at the door said. 

“He’ll want to see me, let me through.” 

She made to push through, but his arm blocked her way. “I’m afraid that I absolutely cannot do that. The Duc isn’t in, nor is there any indication that he will be any time soon.”  
  
“Is he safe?” Her mouth hung open, then closed tightly, too late to seal the words inside with it. The suddenness of it took her by surprise, much less the man, who took a step back. She could have taken the opportunity to barge in then, but that had stopped mattering. 

The man’s glare softened, and he relaxed his grip. “I wish I knew, mademoiselle. I wish I knew.” 

* * *

The next day, she was awakened by the sound of cannon fire. 

The royals might have thought that Orléans did everything. They might have even been true, most of the time. But the Bastille was the people’s choice, and wherever Orléans was, it didn’t matter. The Bastille was _theirs_ , and the nobility, used to shutting themselves behind high gates of stone and steel tipped with gold were forced to watch as they tore those gates down. 

  
Margrid found herself in the middle of it, her feet and hands occupied in a constant scramble to collect bottles from the shops nearby, handing them off to be fired (the Bastille had gunpowder, but they had the city), her hands slick with sweat, and then rushing off to do it again, over and over again, the streets around her a blur of color and motion. Something was moving in her, invigorating her. She had to keep on, she had to, because if not, then- The shops, the Bastille, the shops, the Bastille, the shops, the Bastille, all of it a whirl in her mind until, in the early part of the evening, the guns fell silent. 

Margrid’s legs felt ready to fall off of her, prying herself away from the crowd until she could collapse in a park bench. The girl who had snuck into a party at Palais Royal five years ago should have been thrilled. It was all she’d wanted. But instead, looking inside herself, there was something hollow to it. Bodies littered the ground, victims of the Bastille’s cannon fire. All around her, she could hear shouting, even if she couldn’t make it out, and her legs were sore. Sore and tired. And Orléans wasn’t there, and it shouldn’t have mattered that he wasn’t, but-

They’d died for what they wanted, hadn’t they? It’d been their choice. 

She wiped her hands across her face, hand lowering to rest against her heart, which still pounded heavy beneath her palm, and then she took a deep, gasping breath, then another, then another, eyes closed, alone with her thoughts. She was vaguely aware of a carriage rolling by, barely doing anything to mask the sounds of the crowd in the background before stopping. Who the Hell was even going here in a carriage, anyway? What kind of stupid as fuck aristocrat would think now was a good time for a picnic? 

Didn’t they know-Well, it was their call. 

She wondered if they’d find him in there, in with all the other skeletons stuffed beneath the floorboards of the Bastille. Whether she would get to see him. (They’d never let her see her mother; even now, she wouldn’t know where to go if she wanted to pay her respects.) Not that she would. Because she didn’t like him, she didn’t like him, she didn’t like him, she didn’t-

And if she said it enough, maybe she’d start to believe it. 

“It’s hardly safe to be alone,” There was a familiar, deep rumble by her side. “Who knows who you’ll run into? It could be some rogue.”  
  
_Or worse, an aristocrat._

The retort was just at the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t form it, her mouth had stopped working. 

Louis Phillipe Joseph d’Orléans was by her side on the bench, whole, alive, without so much as a frayed thread in his perfectly arranged coat of black and silver. He was alive. He was-

She didn’t really know how it happened. (Which, if she ever wrote a scandalous memoir about their relationship, that would be the first line.) 

One moment, she was in the streets, seeing him there, alive and whole (she had to repeat it in her mind, because she wasn't sure she'd believe it otherwise), the next, she was kissing him, her sweat-smeared face, coated with ash and gun-smoke, bumping against his cool, clean forehead, tasting the expensive wine that he must have taken at his mid-afternoon meal. She knew that he was moving them but it didn’t feel like she was being lifted because all her grounding was somewhere else entirely, concentrated fully on his mouth, his lips, and her hands holding him to her. Then she was in the carriage with him, still connected, and her hands were clutching at his face with the same grace that they had clutched at broken bottles a few hours before, and she was vaguely aware of him scrambling to close the door and pull the drapes across the windows. Then she was in his lap, and her mouth was smashing against his, his mouth, his upper lip, his lower lip, the curve of his lips, anywhere she could get to, their noses bumping together like they hadn’t had years of practice in fitting against one another, breaths ragged as it seemed like breathing wasn’t as important when it would take time away from what really _mattered_ (namely, climbing Orléans like a tree), and her body was bending against his because it didn’t feel like she could be close enough to him, it wasn’t enough to know he was alive and well and he was with her and-

Orléans broke the kiss. “What is it?”   
  
“What’s what?” She asked. His mouth was still close to hers, everything close and real, down to feeling every heavy breathless gasp that he was trying so hard to pretend wasn’t there. She angled to kiss him again, but he turned away. There had to be _one_ time he didn’t want to feel her up. 

It would have been easier to see what the fuck he was talking about if he wasn’t so _blurry_. That was the last thing she needed, having to get spectacles because her eyes were failing her at the advanced age of 33. “You’re crying.”

“Fuck off, I’m not-”

His hand reached out to brush her cheek, catching a tear. He didn’t say anything further, just gave her a very pointed look. 

“I-fuck, Orléans, I thought you were dead. Everyone was saying that the Duc d’Orléans had been captured and executed by the royals, and when I couldn’t find you, I thought-” she sighed, “They’ve done it before.” 

He kissed her forehead, and she hated how _smug_ it was, how _paternal_ , and she hated that she leaned forward for it and hated when he pulled away and she found herself wanting nothing more than for him to do it again and again. “I’m here. I’m here, I’m alive.” He kissed the edge of her mouth. “I was occupied all through the twelfth. I wanted to send someone after you on the thirteenth, but you were gone. By the time they heard you were in the Palais Royal, you had left, and in the confusion, it was difficult to find anyone. It was by chance that a relation of one of my servants saw you in the Bastille. I hadn’t been sure if-” 

He paused mid-sentence, stroking her back. It could have been for show. She knew him well enough to know it very likely was. But, for the first time over the last few days, she was forced to consider that she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been sure if the other was dead. 

He paused, before finishing abruptly. “You take too many risks,” the man who had once gone up into a balloon made of paper and fueled by flame said, holding her close. 

“Hey, this wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t keep sticking your head out. It’s not easy, being with the man first in line to the chopping block.” 

And he’d looked for her, and she shouldn’t have thought about that, shouldn’t have held it close, because it didn’t mean anything, just Orléans checking to make sure all his tools were in their proper place, but-

She wasn’t going to continue that thought. “What the fuck were you even doing, anyway?”

  
“I was…” He paused, taking a long, long glance at her, and for a second, she was reminded of the convent, when a girl had been found out and called to the front for a misdemeanor. “I was taking a brief reprieve from this business. On a fishing trip with a select few acquaintances; I can give you names, if it would make you feel better.”

“FISHING?” 

“I have my hobbies.” 

“In the middle of-” She’d been panicking, thinking that any second, she would see his body hanging from a pole somewhere, Paris was going to Hell around them, and he’d been casually relaxing on a fishing trip? _Fishing_? 

His hand was irritatingly steady as it stroked her back. “Now, really Margrid, if I was in Paris the entire time, everyone would believe that I had something to do with this.”  
  
“FISHIN-” She was going to _kill_ him. 

He stilled, giving her a long, amused look. “I suppose telling you about the size of the trout that I caught would be in poor taste.”  
  
“You can take that trout and-”  
  
He tilted his head, placing a hand against his heart. “I’m touched. I would almost think you cared.”

She scoffed, “Please, Orléans, if you die, I don’t have a paycheck.” To _think_ that she-

“Hm.” He stroked her hair, and she found herself collapsing against his chest, letting his hands absorb the tension in her body, and she hated that he could do this to her, make her calm, make her quiet, just with a few words and a few touches. “Of course.”

“I’ve gotten used to having steady money,” she buried her face deeper into his waistcoat, and she told herself that it was just so he would have to deal with snot on his expensive clothing as opposed to keeping her eyes away from him, “I don’t want to end up on the streets.”  
  
She didn’t want to say that, the entire time she’d thought he was dead, she hadn’t considered the streets once. She hadn’t thought about what she was going to do, she hadn’t thought about not having a paycheck every month, all she’d considered was that she wouldn’t see him and his stupid face again. 

She fidgeted against him, arms wrapping around his midsection as he stroked her hand softly. “Prick.” 

He only gave a small smile, patting her hand. 

* * *

That night, for once, she got up before he did, leaning over him in the bed. She didn’t get too many chances to look at Philippe like this, when he was in a state of total rest. So often, he was up and about, giving orders or drawing attention to himself, always something to keep himself animated. (Sometimes, she thought she’d give her immortal soul for whatever it was he put in his coffee.) Now, he was….quiet, the only sound in the room the rise and falls of his breath. The fire had died some time ago; and she didn’t really care; it was deep enough in summer it didn’t matter, the night wasn’t as chilly as it would be in a few months, the breeze that filtered through the room gentle. His back was to her, muscular, bare, totally unmarred by any of the work that most of the men she was used to had put themselves through, no knots, no blemishes. His face was passive, relaxed, hanging open against the mattress (she was surprised, she’d thought he would smirk in his sleep, knowing the man.) She stroked back and forth along his jawline, index finger brushing against where his beard began. Funny, the things that were still new, even after all these years. 

Then, her hand moved upwards, stroking his hair against her own will. It was soft, softer than hers, silky to the touch. _Like a lapdog_ , she resisted the urge to snort, knowing that he would hate the comparison. A few lines of silver mixed in with the dark brown, generally well hidden by a wig, and she swallowed as she regarded them, running her index finger along a single strand. 

Of course Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orléans was a man, the same as anyone else. Of course he would get older. He couldn’t be the new, young duc forever. 

And, anyway, forty two wasn’t that old. 

Finally satisfied that he was well and truly unconscious, she leaned down, brushing her lips against his temple. “I think I do like you. Just a bit. Don’t get a big head over it, though, because I think if it gets much bigger, you won’t be able to fit through a door.” She let a small smile play on her face. “They’d have to get someone come and cut away at the wall to make the door larger.” She sighed, thinking of the last day, unable to coax any more lightness out. “Don’t scare me like that again, Philou.” 

The urge to curl up by his side again in the canopied bed that was too large for both of them was overwhelming, which was exactly why she went to the window instead, throwing on her shift, the torn sleeves and mud-encrusted skirt standing out against the rich hardwood floors and Persian carpets. Outside the window, hundreds of orange torches piercing the night sky like blazing stars, and, in the distance, she could hear soft, slurred refrains of _Ah, Ça Ira_ carried on the night breeze. 

The Bastille was gone. It could never hide the royals’ secrets again, there would be no more carriages arriving in the dead of night, no more threats of lettres du cachet to anyone who defied the royal family. The people weren’t afraid anymore, they were awake, they were alive and restless and-

Her stream of thought was interrupted by the touch of lips against her neck. How the Hell did someone so tall manage to get around without making any noise? “You’re up early.” 

“With all this going on?” She stretched out her back, “It would be hard to stay asleep.” 

“Hm.” Philippe seemed more interested in her shoulder at the moment, inching the shift’s sleeves lower and lower so that he could have full access. 

“How long have you been up?” He couldn’t have heard what she’d told him, because if he had, he would be unbearably smug and she would never hear the end about it. 

“Not long,” he nuzzled into her neck. “I awoke to a cold bed and decided to investigate.” 

“How long do you think they’ll be like that, anyway?” Her eyes locked on one of the pikes, a single, long shadow in the torchlight, and the ornament that perched on top of it. De Launay had died, a few others too, what of it? They’d been at the Bastille the whole time, they knew what they were in for. 

If he took any notice of the severed head, he didn’t show it, as cool as ever. “With any luck?” He nodded towards the crowd, “Until my coronation.” 

It was hard to imagine the man who stood behind her, naked except for the dressing robe he’d tossed on, kneeling to take the throne of France in ermine. Despite knowing that it was his goal from the beginning, it was hard to imagine Philippe as a king, still. When she’d first met him, when he was just an irritating aristocratic snob that she’d run into once, it had been easier, especially given the other option, but the more she’d seen of him, the less she could see it. 

She’d seen the man’s bare _ass_ , for God’s sake. 

“I’m surprised you didn’t go out there, show them your support. You know they’d love it.” And he would feed off of the attention, as he always did. Maybe it was how they got on as well as they did, they both liked to be at the center of things. Him because he was born into it, her because she wasn’t. “They were parading a bust of yours out there right alongside Necker’s.” 

“If I were to do that, they would think I had-"

"I know, I know, _something to do with this_.” She smirked. “Didn’t you?”

He gave a small smile, and his voice was the picture of smooth, assured innocence. “I only gathered the tinder, the spark…”

  
“Yeah, yeah, it was all theirs.”  
  
He nuzzled her jaw, and she found herself leaning into it, against her better judgement. “And yours. Don’t think I’ve forgotten how well you did for me today.” If it was any other time, from any other person, she’d dismiss it as empty mockery and shrug him off. Hell, she wanted to now. But there was genuine admiration beneath Philippe’s voice, years of shared work underpinning it. He paused, placing his hands against her shoulder lightly, nose still brushing against her jawline. “Would you rather be there?” 

She belonged there, by all rights. Those were the people she was used to, the people she liked. She didn’t belong in Philippe’s massive canopy bed, sleeping on silk sheets that she had to struggle not to slide off of. Not even when she was respectable. The bastard daughter of a nobleman’s discarded plaything still didn’t sleep on a fine bed, not the least when she was in the convent, sharing a room with four other girls who were constantly giggling together and chirping over their latest letters from home. (Letters that they would sometimes be brave enough to prod her to read for them, offering a trifle here or there as a bribe, a bit of marzipan, a silver coin, a shiny button.) Then, it was starched linen, hard and scratchy against her back. She didn’t belong on down feather pillows, arms spread out on either side of her. Hell, she didn’t even belong on a pillow to begin with. She didn’t belong here, with Philippe stroking along her back, pulling her against the warmth of his chest. She didn’t belong with _anyone_ , much less someone who was going to get tired of her. 

But she didn’t belong out there, either. There was a distance between her and them now, something different. She walked with them, talked with them, distributed papers to them, acted as their voice. Hell, she was still up for grabbing a bit of bread from a bakery and tossing it to them, for nothing but the adulation and the thrill of not getting caught. 

But she wasn’t one of them, not really. 

“No.” She turned so that she was facing him, taking his face in her hands and kissing him, deeply, intimately, his body accommodating hers easily. 

Five years plotting with Philippe, scheming, taking part in his plans, him taking part in hers...they couldn’t get that. They wouldn’t, couldn’t understand what she did between the lines. Despite the class difference, despite him being a smug aristocrat, despite everything, the truth was that they had more in common, now. They shared a world of their own together that no one, not even Hébert or de la Motte or any of the others could understand, the world of two people whose lives were bound up with one another’s like snakes on a doctor’s rod, intertwining, overlapping. 

It wouldn’t matter if they were fucking or not, she would still be sharing this moment with him, because there was no one else that would be right for either of them to be with here and now than one another. 

“I have my own ideas for how we can celebrate,” she said, prying his hand off of her but continuing to hold onto it, leading him to the bed. 

“I’m sure you do,” he smirked, and then he sobered, a trace of real, human vulnerability on his face as he stayed at the edge of the bed, taking her hand in his own. “Stay with me tonight, Margrid.” 

Generally, when they did this, she left after first sleep at the latest. If they went another round after that, she was gone by second sleep, at least. Staying longer made it more permanent, made it more real. Fucking Philippe was one thing, having breakfast with him was another. There’d been a few slip-ups here and there, like the first time they’d done this, but they managed a rhythm. It _worked_. 

But still…

The Bastille was gone and Philippe was alive. Philippe was alive, in front of her, bold, confident, infuriating Philippe, asking her to stay with him. Who said they needed a rhythm anymore, when he would be king and have some royal mistress? (She would have to refuse him, even if he was inclined to offer it to her.) 

She nodded finally. “Alright.” 

This time, when he smiled, she could see an edge of relief peaking out through it, not like the smiles where he knew the outcome before he’d even opened his mouth, before she made short work of wiping it off his face, pinning him to the bed, and she didn’t have to think about life and death and Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orléans. 

“I...apologize,” he said, and the words made her nearly jolt up off of the bed. Had the royals abducted the real Philippe and put his secret half brother in his place? His mouth moved mechanically for a moment, before he sighed, “For making you worry. I was reckless, and I didn’t consider the impact it would have on you.” 

“I wasn’-” she almost said, before realizing that _that_ was useless, instead wrapping her arms around his middle, her body curling into his, her chin buried in his neck so that she could feel his pulse against her. “Don’t ever fucking do that to me again.” 

“Never. Margrid...regardless of what happens, I _will_ come back. They won’t kill me that easily, hm? I won’t leave you.” 

And she knew it was a lie, because it was inevitable that he would. This kind of thing always came with a set time. He would leave her, eventually, because he wouldn’t know what else to do, because he got bored, because she finally drove him away, because one casual promise from him would never mean much when he made ten like it a day, Hell he’d probably made ten of the exact same promises to Genlis, Elliot, all the rest of them. Because, in the end, everyone else had, and he might have thought that he was different from other people, that he was so much higher above the rest of them, but he wasn’t that different, and she was meant to be alone and it was stupid to want otherwise. He would leave her because the thought of him staying was as difficult to imagine as him taking the throne, or Margrid becoming a duchesse, or Hébert writing something that was actually good. 

Other people, people like Antoinette, rich and elegant and simpering, they had people who would stay for them. They had people who loved them, because who didn’t want their own fairy tale princess to coddle and protect? While she...

He raised one of her hands off of him, pressing a kiss to her wrist, and she didn’t want to know how he knew to do it then, when he had gotten so _good_ at reading her. Her hand lightly stroked against the stubble scattered across his cheek before travelling downwards to rest in its previous spot. 

Against her will, her body relaxed around the too-familiar warmth of his body, settling in time with his steady, even breaths, and she’d deal with this later, when it wouldn’t mean that much. It was a lie, but it was a pretty, easy one, and she wanted to believe it.

That night, Philippe was alive, the Bastille was destroyed, and they were one step closer to what they wanted. That was all she needed to know. 

**Author's Note:**

> \- I took a few details on convent life from Madame Roland's memoirs (it should be noted that she had a LOVELY time during the year she spent in convent school)
> 
> -The popular rumor at the time really was that Philippe had been imprisoned in the Bastille or killed (his own servants believed it and were thrilled to see him alive and well), and yes, he was out fishing. Grace Elliot discusses it in her memoirs. The reason Philippe was unable to get back to Paris on the 12th was because she kept him up talking until 2 AM, trying to get him to appease his cousin. On the 13th, he attended his cousin at his daily toilette, though Louis was....mildly pissed to see him there, to say the least, and Philippe left VERY offended. On the 14th, he was enjoying a breakfast with Lafayette and Bailly (according to Elliot), but was disturbed by the cannon fire from the Bastille. 
> 
> -Historically, his loyal mistress, Agnés du Buffon, accompanied him at his chateau in Monceau shortly after he realized that Something was going on in Paris. Personally, I decided that that wouldn't work for Margrid because (1) It didn't have the same punch if it was only a few hours where she believed he might be dead, and I wanted to see her come to terms with it more and (2) I felt like, with someone as tied into the action on the streets as Margrid, she wouldn't be as easy to summon as an elegant lady. She needed to be part of the action, and Philippe needed to track her down eventually. 
> 
> -Reports of Lambesc's Charge at the Tuileries do mention that they had busts of Philippe and Necker. Philippe tends to be one of the lesser discussed figures of the French Revolution, so it can be easy to forget exactly HOW popular he was with the common people. 
> 
> -There were only 7 people at the Bastille at the time it was taken, and they were treated as humanely as you can possibly treat anyone in an 18th century prison when they've been arrested without a proper trial. That being said, Margrid isn't exactly likely to KNOW that. The cries about "Killing the prisoners" did happen historically; that would be courtesy of none other than the Marquis de Sade, who was moved shortly before the Bastille was stormed. 
> 
> \- Margrid's role at the Bastille is taken wholesale from the report of Madame Marguerite Pinaigre. Though the general focus on the Storming of the Bastille tends to be on the men, women were definitely there, if not in the same numbers, and someone like Margrid would be very unlikely to keep away from the action.
> 
> -Margrid's line about being with the man who's first to offer up his neck to the chopping block is taken from Abigail Adams in 1776: "Well, think of it, John, to be married to the man who is always first in line to be hanged!" Orléans is an aristocrat, so he wouldn't be hanged, the guillotine hadn't quite come into mass use yet, so...


End file.
